faderift | OPEN: The Western Approach

WHO: Everyone!
WHAT: The Western Approach is a terrible place. You should definitely go there.
WHEN: Bloomingtide 15 onward
WHERE: The Western Approach
NOTES: This is open to everyone. Characters who would not happily go to the hell desert probably have to go anyway; it's a war, not a vacation.

Once these wastes were a land of plenty. Can you believe it? The rain came north over the Gamordan Peaks, turning the plains green and verdant for three months of the year. Eight hundred years ago, that changed. During the Second Blight, darkspawn spilled out of an enormous crack in the earth, corrupting it with their foul blood... and it never recovered, even after they were driven back underground. The Grey Wardens built Adamant Fortress to stand watch over that chasm, but eventually even they abandoned it to the wind and the biting sand.

What few of us eke out a living in this Maker-forsaken place do so knowing that any number of deaths await us: darkspawn raids, dragons, bandits—not to mention starvation from the lack of water and game. If we stay, it is because we know there are treasures buried in the bones of this place, ruins from the time when Tevinter ruled, and even earlier. We pass tales around our campfires of the things we have seen shrouded in the dust storms. My favorites are the ones about relics that could restore the Western Approach once more... but I don't believe them. Truth be told, on nights when the wind is calm, I can stand on a hilltop and see for miles in the moonlight over a stark beauty of which no other Orlesian can claim to know the equal. On those nights, I hope it will never change.

—From Lands of the Abyss by Magistrate Gilles de Sancriste

I. THE DESERT

When Scout Harding calls somewhere the worst place in Thedas, that's probably a bad sign. Even when nothing in the Western Approach is deliberately trying to kill you, there's nothing kind or forgiving about the landscape: bare and arid, carved through by sharp-dropped canyons, dotted with abandoned mines and signs of the deaths of lost travelers. Winds sweeping through to whip stinging sand into uncovered faces, and periodic dust storms obscure visibility entirely. It's warm enough to be dangerous but not so hot, at this time of year, that heat exhaustion and dehydration can't creep up on you while you aren't paying attention.

And at any given moment, something probably is deliberately trying to kill you. The food chain in the region is top-heavy, with quillbacks, phoenixes, hyenas, and varghests roaming hungrily and as likely to attack one another as the sparse local prey population. Compared to their natural competitors, the Inquisition's forces look like easy marks. The camps the Inquisition scatters at lookout points throughout the region require constant watch, and going anywhere alone is inadvisable. Not only because of the hostile local everything, but also because it is incredibly easy to get lost. One rock formation looks much like another after hours in the sun or bathed in shifting moonlit shadows, and good luck finding many other landmarks. There are a few: chunks of pillars or arches from some ruined structure, or the occasional odd pillar that might, if someone investigates, prove to mark a trail of sorts.

Plus: the only people who seem determined to survive out here are cutthroat bandits and stray Venatori. Double-plus: a high dragon makes occasional fly-bys, scouring the ground below for anything edible, armored or not.

Some reprieve comes at night, relief from both the sun and the area's primarily diurnal predators. But that's when the darkspawn come out.

II. GRIFFON WING KEEP

Bloomingtide 16-17: Taking the Keep

Only a small force of Tevinter cultists remains in Griffon Wing Keep when the Inquisition arrives, seemingly on their way out the door already, but the sight of Inquisition banners is enough to make them stay and fight. There's no need for siege equipment, but there is call for a little bit of patience. With it, a small battalion is able to evade the mages and archers on the walls and storm the doors with few casualties. Fewer than three dozen warriors wait inside. It's a quick, brutal fight; it only takes a night.

Bloomingtide 18 Onward: Home Away From Home

Once the Keep is cleared of occupants, it's ripe for the Inquisition to… occupy… But with implicit permission, at least. Those who aren't needed for fights elsewhere may be put to work clearing out debris and small animals and the remnants left by the cultists, and within a few days the fortress is a serviceable outpost, much more hospitable than the camps out in the sand. Barracks mean even those who don't have beds at Skyhold may have one here, and it takes less than a week for an enterprising merchant to arrive with ale.

III. THE STILL RUINS

Despite signs of recent activity, the lavish Tevinter palace tucked incongruously into the canyons is quiet and still, when the Inquisition discovers it—quiet, still, but not empty. The ancient ruin is brimming with demons and Tevinters in incredibly outdated fashions, all frozen in place, as they have been for hundreds of years. No one breathes or blinks, but their skin is still warm and alive to the touch.

Beyond the entryway and halls and through the courtyard, there are signs of research and experimentation, and one man stood unmoving with his hand clasped around something unseen.

Perhaps someone will discover the cause. Perhaps someone will undo the spell that's been cast over the palace. Perhaps, if someone does, someone will take the opportunity to not immediately murder all of these valuable sources of ancient information, and instead only murder most of them. In the meantime, however, it is unlikely that anyone will ever be able to get this close to a rage demon without receiving a face full of fire. Take advantage.

IV. CORACAVUS

Signs of the Venatori point upward: up the hills, up ladders and towers, and into the ancient Tevinter prison, Coracavus, that was built into the mountainside. The ruin is filled with sand now, with half-collapsed walls and anything not made of stone worn away by winds, and the Venatori are long gone, their hunt for relics from the glory days of the Imperium abandoned when an excavation attempt opened the prison to darkspawn, instead. The darkspawn have retreated as well, but there are signs of their presence. Namely the smell and the half-eaten corpses of slaves—primarily elven and dwarven—who were left behind to their fates when the Tevinters fled.

There's no sign of them now, but digging through their abandoned camps may turn up a name, if anyone would like to see that he pays.

V. ADAMANT FORTRESS

A day's determined walk from the nearest Inquisition camp, Adamant Fortress overlooks the vast chasm—dubbed the Abyssal Rift—from which darkspawn poured during the Second Blight. It stood abandoned for nearly 150 years before the Grey Wardens' recent reoccupation, and it's abandoned again now, emptied out well before the Inquisition's forces arrive. There are signs that the retreat was a hasty one: scattered belongings, opened doors, abandoned meals, and no fewer than fifty bodies left on a mass pyre that only half-burned without anyone to tend it.

The Veil has always been thin here, and it's thinner now, where demons have been pulled through from the Fade. Rifts hang over the battlements and in the corridors, and escaped shades lurk in the dark corridors, siphoning away the willpower of those who linger until they come close enough to attack. Those who visit the Fortress set up camp outside of it rather than within it, wisely.

There are clear signs of blood sacrifice, for those who look: the bodies, blood stains on the stone floors, neat lists of names systemically crossed through. Sorting through documents left behind may turn up vague notes in a mage's runic shorthand or the journal of a trepidatious new recruit (Lourde, a pickpocket, crossed through on the registers). Behind a locked door in the lowest rooms are the bodies of sixteen mages, still in their Circle robes, left lying where they fell when the Joining took them. Mages who were among the rebels in Redcliffe may recognize a face or two as belonging to the hardliners who left with the Tevinters.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Clarke stands back.

Doing what she's told isn't usually her strong suit, and she's from too far north, too deep in the Marches, to recognize darkspawn blood when she sees it. But something is off. And she knows who Anders is by reputation only, but it's a reputation that makes not entirely ignoring him when he gives commands seem like the smarter choice, to a girl who was fourteen years old during the Kirkwall Rebellion and--childishly, perhaps, parroting her elders before she understood everything, but nonetheless--glad someone had done something.

So: standing back. She holds her staff against the ground like a walking stick. "What is safe?"

He very carefully starts gathering up blood-covered cloth, trying to make a clear path through the mess that doesn't touch Darkspawn blood. Thankfully it's not like they ran about willy-nilly, coating the walls, so the task isn't too difficult.

"It's the blood that's not safe, so anything that's not got blood on it should be fine to handle. Just be certain, as certain as you can, before touching." A glance at her tells him that she's one of the mages he's seen around Skyhold and that she's young, but nothing more. "Thank you for listening."

Not everyone would heed something he says, no matter how much certainty happens to be in his voice.

"You're the Warden," Clarke says, a little wry—not unfriendly. Not particularly friendly, either, but that's just her manner, well matched with the brisk way she crosses a clear part of the floor to a fallen body and crouches to look it in the face. She doesn't touch; it's obvious from looking that there's no pulse. "No one ever mentioned that, when they talked about you."

Maybe everyone becomes the bloodiest thing they do. Maybe in ten years the Wardens will be known for Adamant Fortress instead of the Blight.

"There's a lot they don't mention." His voice is very dry. She doesn't sound angry, and that's often enough for him. He watches her for a moment near the body before returning to gathering up what he's going to recommend be burned for safety. The stacking at least isn't taking too long, and he uses strips of cloth torn from the corpses to mop up more of the blood, dry it as much as he can.

"It's easier for most to condense someone down to one thing, and forget that they're a person. That there's complexity. Someone is good, or someone is evil. Or someone is entirely forgotten." It would be nice to be forgotten. "If you've questions, I might answer. Or I might not. Though I've a question, and it's to know your name."

"Clarke."

For a moment there's a line between her eyebrows--a deeper one than the near-permanent troubled furrow. Thinking of her own problems, which are smaller than Anders' but feel very large to her. Then thinking of the dribble of black blood in the corner of the dead mage's mouth.

"I'm from Kaiten," she adds after a pause. "They used to say we'd be sent to Kirkwall if we misbehaved." She looks up at him without standing, using her staff for balance. It's an old, damaged thing, taken off a body somewhere; she was never given one in the Circle. It collapsed before she ever became a mage proper. "They didn't mean it. Naughty children will be eaten by ogres or sent to Kirkwall, that sort of thing. It wasn't so bad there."

"Kinloch Hold, here." He exhales, scooping up one of the cups and wondering how he should contact Blackwall to see what the head Warden wants without rousing suspicion. "They sent some of ours to Kirkwall."

His voice is grim. "Kinloch was not good. But Kirkwall was worse." One mage's arms get crossed over his chest as Anders works to ignore Justice's ongoing rant about it apparently being all mages yet again.

"But really. Can you truly call a cage that you're put in for no crime save being born connected to the Fade not so bad? Is there a single Circle where 'disappearances' didn't happen, where at least a few Templars didn't take their displeasure out on mages? Or worse?"

"No," Clarke says, quietly.

She only knows the one, but her mentor—nearly a father—he's gone. For the handful of Templars she now counts as friends there are a dozen other she would be frightened to see in the streets.

But less frightened, now. She stands back up.

"I don't mean that I would go back," she says. "I won't." Her hands are wrapped in bandages, as if to guard against calluses, and she flexes one around her staff. One doesn't say thank you to a man who blows up chantries while seeking shelter in an Andrastian organization. But she can come a little close. "No one else was going to do anything. I'm sorry you have to carry it."

He looks up at her, quiet for a moment. Every single mage that says they won't go back is a balm, a light in the dark. They'll stand against the fear of the unknown rather than go back to the familiar fear of Templar cruelty.

"Thank you." That's not a sentiment he hears often, either. "It's not as heavy when I meet more who will not go back. We can't let the Circles happen again, and if mages refuse to go back, refuse to surrender, they can't. They need us to be sheep, herded, dumb, obedient."

Anders gets to his own feet, looking down at the bodies and the room. He's made a safe enough path for now. The closest senior Warden will have to decide what they want done with the bodies, or if it's even going to be a Warden call. It might be easier to pretend they were simply blood mages rather than undergoing the Joining; there are some secrets that could be dangerous if known to non-Wardens.

"The longer we're free and the more determined we are, the harder it will be for them to cage us again."

OPEN: The Western Approach

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